Scenes From A Wedding

October 6, 2002|By Christopher West Davis special correspondent

The proposal of marriage was written in fire on water -- more than 50 floating candles tethered together to spell out M-A-R-R-Y M-E in the deep end of the swimming pool when the bride came home from work, work which, appropriately enough, recently included making the movie What Lies Beneath.

She said yes, in regular, invisible, airborne words.

The invitations went out, again curiously suggesting yet another of the bride-to-be's recent projects (Cast Away). Scripted on parchment with edges meticulously singed over an open flame, rolled and slipped into a cobalt blue bottle, corked and bubble-wrapped, they arrived through the uncertain sea of the U.S. mail to a hundred or so family and closest friends.

The wedding would be held at sunset, looking west into the Golfo de Nicoya, in the neo-Classical amphitheater carved into the 1,000-foot-high promontory of Villa Caletas, just outside of Jaco, Costa Rica.

We would be there.

The best air deal my wife could find was Grupo TACA, which turned out to be a pleasure: a shiny, roomy new airbus with free everything (headphones, booze) and courtly attendants.

Costa Rica is essentially a bowl. You fly into the middle of it -- the Central Valley -- and then get ground transport to climb out. Over the rim of mountains to the northeast, the Caribbean coast and culture, where descendants of imported railway workers speak Spanish with a Jamaican accent and things are a little "wilder," as our shuttle driver said. To the southwest, where we were headed, the Pacific Coast, an hour and 40 minutes away, was a quieter, less hectic land of ticos and ticas (Costa Ricans' nicknames for each other that somehow evolved from the affectionate "little brother, little sister").

Dennis, our driver, was a total surfer dude from California. With Allman Brother hair and a big-toothed, bright smile, he came here for the killer waves when he was a teenager, got bitten, went home, finished high school and, with a little help from his father, came back and settled down. That was 11 years ago. He now owned four beachfront surfing cabinas that he rented out, drove this shuttle and surfed every day. He had just reluctantly divorced his wife of seven years, a Costa Rican girl he had married young, maybe too young.

Dennis knew the country. Out of a population of 3.5 million, there were 100,000 Americans in residence and he guessed about half as many more here "unofficially," renewing, as he did, their three-month visas by regularly stepping over the border to Panama or Nicaragua, whiling away 72 hours and getting a fresh stamp on their passport. There were, of course, ways to sidestep this little dance, officials who might be persuaded to accept a special fee ($100) to click a date stamp back and forth a bit.

We slowed down as we crossed the bridge over Rio Tarcoles. There below, in plain view, caked with gray baking mud and lined up in rows right under the bridge, were at least two dozen monstrous American crocodiles. Dennis said he once bought some chicken at the market, tied it to the end of a rope and dangled it down there. He had the crocs jumping way high out of the water, snapping and splashing, until a cop came along and made him stop. He was told it can be a problem if they swallow food with a 50-foot rope attached to it.

Passing pastures and farms and forests, all reminiscent of Africa, we continued to pry into Dennis' personal life. It seems that Costa Ricans marry young; by 18, most girls are wed. By 20, they're mothers. Thus the market for available sweethearts begins in the midteen range. Dennis, for instance, began dating his future wife when she was 15, married her at 18 and now, seven years after that, ended it all (surprisingly for a 90 percent Catholic country, divorces cost about $9 and took about six weeks) because she had not honored all of the vows. He was already dating a Peruvian woman, older (in her 20s), a graduate student and a much more serious person.

Steep, narrow switchbacks get you up to the Villa Caletas hotel, a mishmash of plaster, tile and stone architecture that looks sort-of French, maybe Spanish. Even after your ride drops you off, steep walkways and stairs still stand between you and check-in. Erick, our cheerful but sinewy bell hop, lugged our bags the 100-or-so-foot final ascent to the front desk, only to find out our villa was just off the driveway below.

Our room had its own little swimming pool, which has to be one of the silliest things in the world. I tried to estimate its dimensions using an appropriate international unit: It was about 10 bathtubs long, 2 bathtubs wide, 3 deep. A push off from the wall, half a stroke of freestyle and you can just about put on the brakes in time to avoid cracking your head on the opposite end.